Mergers between Competing Hospitals: Lessons from Retrospective Analyses

In April 2002, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the Hospital Merger Retrospective Project to study consummated hospital mergers. This project was precipitated by a long string of unsuccessful hospital merger challenges by the FTC, the US Department of Justice, and the state of California. Accordingly, a principal goal of the retrospective study included "studying consummated hospital mergers to determine whether particular hospital mergers have led to higher prices". The studies presented here represent the output of this project. Collectively, these studies provide important empirical insights into a variety of issues relevant to hospital antitrust analysis, including the scope of relevant geographic markets in hospital merger analysis, the relevance of not-for-profit status on post-merger pricing behavior, and the impact of hospital mergers on clinical quality.